


Holly, Ivy, and Snow

by Aenaria



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ALL THE FLUFF, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Magical Realism, Reunion Fic, Steggy Secret Santa, at least slightly, because of the whole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9151231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenaria/pseuds/Aenaria
Summary: “It’s the season of miracles, you know,” her reflection says, right before she waggles her fingers again and wanders out of sight.Sometimes, if you’re very, very lucky, events and occurrences fall into place that it almost seems miraculous.  Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, separated by time and distance, certainly aren’t expecting any miracles, but when things happen unexpectedly, sometimes it’s best just to grab hold, accept things, and walk into a new world.





	

**Author's Note:**

> @cantquiteplace, here’s your Steggy Secret Santa entry! I know that I’m squeaking it in right under the wire, so thank you very much for your patience in waiting for this piece. I hope that you enjoy it, and that you’ve had a very happy holiday season as well! The story obviously goes a little AU in the middle, but as I’ve always been a sucker for a reunion fic and a little magic, I couldn’t help but take things down that path.
> 
> Thanks to dizzy-redhead and Meri for cheerleading and helping me whip this piece into shape - I know we’ve all been crazy busy lately, so I really and truly appreciate them taking the time to help me out here. Also, thanks to everyone who’s put up with my insane ramblings and crazed hair tugging as I tried to finish this piece. You guys are awesome - never forget that.

Christmas Past

 

The package is small, unobtrusive, loosely wrapped in faded old newsprint and sealed off with a bit of grubby twine that’s been scrounged up from somewhere.  Peggy spots it sitting on the seat of her desk chair at the London SSR base, discreetly shoved under the desk enough to hide it from prying eyes.  She’d only stepped away from her paperwork for a few minutes to relieve herself and stretch her legs, and at this time of night - early morning, really - the base was quiet, the frantic energy of wartime reduced to a low hum of background surveillance.  

Peggy is certain this little wrapped package wasn’t there before she’d left.

When she picks up the parcel, she sees a detailed pencil sketch on the most faded part of paper, where the print had been rubbed away to just grey shadows.  The shadows have been incorporated into the sketch, providing depth and shade and light in a way that only a skilled artist can bring to life.  The sketch itself is rather seasonally appropriate, Peggy thinks, looping vines of English ivy that wind around prickly holly leaves decorated with fat berries, shaded just such a way that it’s all too easy to see the gloss and shine on the curves of the jewel-like berries.  From the right angle, she’d swear they were real if they weren’t in black and white.

There’s only one person she knows who would go through the trouble to hand draw such a lovely little design, and if Peggy was inclined to blushing, this would be a time for it.  As it is, she’s lucky that the room is all but deserted.  She has a reputation to maintain, after all.  

Ever so carefully, Peggy undoes the twine and folds down the paper, setting it aside (later on she’ll preserve the sketch between the pages of an old wartime journal, passed to her relatives and down through the generations, leaving them to later wonder of the provenance of such a treasured little drawing).  Inside the paper wrapping is a small tin, with a little note scribbled on the top of it.   _ ‘Dear Peggy - Don’t ask where I got this,’ _ the note reads.   _ ‘Just enjoy it.  Merry Christmas, SGR.’ _  When she pries the lid off the tin, it’s the smell of the tea that hits her first.  Proper, full leaf tea that smells fresh, a far sight from the pressed blocks of Compo tea that’s a part of their SSR rations.  Peggy knows full well that this tea won’t turn to scummy, slimy water just when it hits the drinkable temperature either.  

Peggy smiles to herself, running lacquered red nails around the edges of the tin.

A couple of days later on Christmas night, Peggy slips Steve a small present with a thank you note attached, wishing him a Happy Christmas and a stern but affectionate directive to stay safe.  The Howling Commandos are to be sent to the mainland for some stealth raiding in the morning, so Peggy isn’t sure how her gift is received, at least not right away.  

When she sees the footage from the raid preparations, however, featuring the compass that now has a small cutout of her own visage crammed into the lid, Peggy is once more incredibly glad that she’s not a blusher.

**********

Christmas Present

 

While Peggy has never been one to shirk her duties, even she has to admit that pulling the Christmas Eve shift at the newly-formed SHIELD is enough to irk her.  

_ Be fair, _ she reminds herself,  _ you volunteered for the Christmas Eve shift, because your only other options were Howard’s holiday bash or a long distance call with your mother.   _ And as said call would likely involve Mother asking all sorts of probing questions about her marriage prospects, Peggy is in no rush at all to get into that conversation.  As it stands, who Peggy is - or isn’t - seeing is her business alone, and while Mother is well-meaning, some days those conversations take more out of her than she can possibly handle.

And, admittedly, she could have sent one of the wet-behind-the-ears agents who had also pulled the unlucky Christmas Eve shift out to investigate the disturbance call at the surveillance site; there was no reason for the co-head of SHIELD to handle as simple a task as this one.

_ ‘Let’s face it, Carter.  You’re just not in a festive mood this year.’ _

_ When are you ever? _ the little voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Howard replies.

Still, Peggy shakes it off and moves forward, pulling the flashlight out of the glove compartment before proceeding up the path.  The surveillance equipment is set up within a crumbling, creaky old Victorian house in one of the outer boroughs of New York City, in a place called Tottenville that’s still practically rural as compared to the more built-up areas of Manhattan, or even downtown Brooklyn.  Maybe once upon a time the house was grand, with balconies and porches and a widow’s walk, but now it just looks decrepit, like something out of some gothic novel full of ghosts and lost loves.  It’s a good deterrent for nosy people, however, and provides a prime view into the house on the other side of the clearing where all manner of bad things are being plotted.

Apparently.  At least according to the intelligence, which Peggy is starting to doubt the veracity of as she flips through the logbooks that are spread out across a desk in the remains of the kitchen.  Except for that, on the last page of the latest book, the words trail off into a nasty scrawl, like the pen was dropped hastily as the agent on duty was running away from something.  An agent who is nowhere to be found, she notes.

But the house is silent, save for some vague wind whistling through the window panes, so Peggy feels like it’s worth exploring further.  That second sense for danger inside of her isn’t going off, so she wanders down the hallway, waving her flashlight into the open rooms she comes across.  At the third room, the beam from the flashlight catches the surface of a mirror, bouncing back and practically blinding Peggy.  She shakes her head quickly, blinking the sudden spots away, then sets her shoulders.  She’s never been one to shirk from a challenge, not before the war, in the war, and definitely not now.

Peggy pushes the door a bit wider, and it swings open on silent hinges.  The wind is even stronger in this room, thanks to the cracked and broken windows that allow the outside in.  Tree branches poke through the frames, bare and dark and bent from the New York winter.  Climbing ivy has spilled from the tree branches to take root on the floor and up the bookshelves, still green and vibrant even though the cold is just getting more and more bitter as winter continues on.  Peggy shivers a bit, the chill seeping in even through her heavy woolen coat.

Still, she’s got a job to do, so she pushes the cold aside and turns to the mirror instead.  It’s an entirely unassuming mirror, large and oval on a wood stand, almost exactly like one she had in her childhood bedroom.  The flashlight gleams dully off of it, reflecting back Peggy’s pale face, complete with red lips pressed into a slight frown.

“Chasing ghosts again, Carter,” she chastises herself, stepping closer to the mirror.

She hopes that, wherever Steve is, he’s happy and with his friends and family once more.  It’s an idle, passing thought, and one that’s gotten easier with time as she’s moved on with her life.  It’s easier to think of him with fondness rather than regret, she’s realized, even though there’s more than one night when she lies awake wondering  _ what could have been.   _ But while he’s not here anymore, Peggy still certainly is, and she will keep moving forward.

Peggy reaches out and presses a hand against the glass, and that’s when the world seems to spin for just a moment.  She blinks, and everything is just slightly off, brighter and duller all at the same time.  The room seems even more washed out in the darkness as she whirls around to see what’s suddenly out of place in the room, while the climbing ivy is greener, creeping and crawling over even more of the room.  Like she’s been dropped into a film, she thinks, even though she’s not quite sure where that comparison even came from.  Then there’s a movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turns back to the mirror to find her own reflection there waving at her with a sly grin.

The flashlight falls from her limp fingers, hitting the floor with a loud rattle that seems to shake the room for a moment.  Before Peggy’s brain can even begin to make sense of what she’s seeing, her reflection blows her a kiss, practically twinkling in the light of her own identical flashlight.  “It’s the season of miracles, you know,” her reflection says, right before she waggles her fingers again and wanders out of sight.

That’s the last thing Peggy sees before the world spins again, taking her awareness with it and leaving her to collapse, unconscious, into the climbing ivy.

**********

The first sense that returns to Peggy is her hearing.  She can hear fuzzy, murmured voices and the clomping of heavy boots against the wooden floor, loud and jarring and altogether too familiar after the war years.  They don’t sound like her agents, however - the voices are more varied, the accents slightly different.  It’s enough for her to decide quickly that laying there and pretending she’s unconscious is the best plan of action until she learns a little bit more about her current situation.

_ Only you, Carter,  _ she thinks.

It almost sounds like someone’s calling for a medic, though the terms are a bit unfamiliar to Peggy’s ears.  But then some more of those footsteps come closer to her, wearing those big boots but a lot more fleet footed than the rest of the people in the room.  One of her arms is bent under her, she realizes, right in the perfect position for her to reach the small pistol secreted in her coat pocket.  Just in case.   _ Be ready _ , she tells herself, fingers still but ready to twitch at the slightest alarm.

The floor creaks, and there’s a shift in the air, the rustling sounds of a larger body crouching down next to her, she suspects.  Then she can feel the pressure of a hand, light and careful, tracing the lapel of her coat collar, which seems entirely too invasive for her liking.  It only takes a matter of seconds for Peggy to pull the pistol from her pocket and aim it in the direction of the hand.  She peels open her eyes just as the hands whip away from her, held in the air in the universal symbol for don’t shoot.

But then Peggy’s fingers go limp again, the gun dropping away because she’s not even certain she can breathe at the moment, let alone hold a weapon.  “Steve?” she whispers, unsure if her eyes are playing a trick on her once more.

“Peggy?” Steve replies back, looking about as stunned as she’s currently feeling.

**********

“You’ve got to give me something, Peggy,” Steve says to her, after any number of pokes and prods and blood draws and tests and hours upon hours of questioning by supposedly intimidating people.  “No one out there believes that you’re you, despite all of the tests.”  

Seventy years, or thereabouts.  She’s lost decades in the space of a night, having gone into a house on December 24th, 1947 and walking out of it on December 24th, 2015.  Added to that, opening up her eyes to see the face of her long-lost love, who’s apparently not as dead as everyone had believed?  It should not be possible, and yet...  

“Well, I can’t blame them for that,” Peggy says with a shrug.  “I wouldn’t believe me either, if I was in their position.  This whole thing is so incredibly...absurd and impossible.”

There’s a part of her that’s still wondering if she’s died, if she’s being perfectly honest with herself.  Steve’s face would be one of the first ones she’d want to see in the afterlife, even with the altered combat uniform and odd haircut that he’s currently sporting.  But the ache in her back from where she hit the floor and the scrapes on her hands are saying otherwise, tiny little nicks on her palms that irritate and itch as they heal says otherwise.  That as strange and absurd as this is, it  _ is  _ currently happening and she must deal with it.

Now that she’s received a clean bill of health, she’s been unceremoniously installed in a bare room for interrogation in a secret basement of a decommissioned military base near where she was found - in the same exact house she’d been investigating when the world spun, which makes no sense to her, but that’s par for the course for this seventy-year day.  She’d been expecting to see another woman in sleek tactical gear come to question her (and despite the situation Peggy feels a moment of solidarity with these women who are working hard and doing their jobs in the same field as she was and getting the proper amount of respect from their co-workers), but instead Steve had come into the room.

He looks a little battered and bruised, but there’s a longing in his eyes that Peggy recognizes all too well.  It’s been years since she’s seen it, but just like that it comes rushing back to her.

“You’d be surprised,” Steve says with a sigh.  “You’re not the first person to come back from the dead recently.”

“Dead?” she blurts out.  “How?”

“Old age.”  Steve frowns, and rubs a hand over his chin.  “Just a few hours ago, actually.  In your sleep.”

“And yet I’m here.”  Peggy purses her lips and nods, looking down at the surface of the well used metal table in front of her.  Well, as her life has officially stopped making any sort of sense, she may as well go in full force until she knows more.  “December, 1943.  You gave me a Christmas present.  A little tin of actual, fresh tea that you distinctly told me not to ask where you’d gotten it.  But what I remember most is the wrapping.  Old newsprint, nothing special.  But you’d sketched out these little sprigs of holly on there.  They were so realistic, like they could jump to life right off the page.  It was a little bright spot, a little bit of hope even in the middle of the war.”

Peggy pauses, taking in the stunned mullet look that’s currently on Steve’s face.   _ That’s a good sign _ , she thinks.  Her eyes trail over to the mirrored pane set in the wall, an obvious one-way window, and she decides to toss in one more little detail, just in case anyone else is listening.  “Of course, if that’s not enough we could also talk about that time in Montmartre - “

Steve cuts her off with a hasty cough, a red flush stealing up his neck as she fights back a smirk.

**********

It’s been eleven days, and the scientists that Steve works with still have no idea how Peggy ended up in 2015 - well, 2016 by now.  They have any number of theories involving parallel universes or splitting cells and string theory and all sorts of complex ideas that even Peggy can’t quite grasp all that well.  It doesn’t really matter, however, as the world seems to be very real and insistent upon her presence in it.  

They install her in a small apartment on the Avengers’ base - officially it’s because they were the ones who had found her and agreed to help her out, but unofficially they all know that it’s because how can they really trust someone who appeared the same time that her older self died and who may be any sort of a clone, alien replicant, or whatever.  They don’t trust her, but that’s not surprising; it’s not been the first time in Peggy’s life that she’s had to deal with something like that.  

Hell, she’s not even sure she trusts herself right now.  But she’s never backed down from a challenge before, and has no intention of doing so in this new world either.  Peggy spends her time reading anything she can get her hands on, scanned newsprint and heavy texts, transferred to digital and loaded onto a tablet that’s about as thick as a watch face.  “It helped me,” Steve had said when he stopped by on her second day there to hand over the technology.  “It’s not everything, but it’ll give you an idea, at least.”

“About the world, these days?”

“And how messed up it is, yeah.”

_ The season of miracles _ , her reflection had said, which Peggy can’t help feel is a bald-faced lie as she reads through all of the events that occurred in the past seventy years.  And yet...she’s not alone here, which may just be a small miracle in itself.  Steve visits her nearly every day, sometimes under the guise of bringing her new educational materials or toiletries, sometimes with a sweet treat from the canteen that he thinks she’d like, and sometimes just because.

Whatever the reason, Peggy certainly isn’t complaining.

Steve stops by again that night, a couple of portable mugs of tea in hand and a light dusting of snow across the shoulders of his leather jacket.  “I know it’s not quite your preferred brew,” he says, handing one over to her, “but it’s hot.  And spiked.”

Peggy snorts indelicately, bending down to inhale the mingling scents of hot tea with a hint of bourbon around the edges.  “Thank you.”  She shows him over to the couch, rough industrial fabric that’s not the most comfortable piece she’s ever had the misfortune to experience.  However it’s right in front of the window, giving them a perfect viewpoint to watch the softly falling snow, twinkling and gleaming in the bright spotlights of the compound.  Typical for winters in Upstate New York, she’s been warned.

And it’s one of those moments, Peggy realizes as she sips at her tea, where she can’t quite believe that everything’s real, that she is stretched and thin and silent, blanketed in that same snow that’s falling heavy outside and covering everything with a layer of ice that stops the world in its tracks.  That if she lets herself believe it, she’ll end up a frozen shell of what she once was also.

But that’s not entirely true, is it?

Peggy can feel the travel mug in her hand, warming her fingers from the outside in, the smell of tea leaves curling in her nose.  The weave of the couch is rough under her stocking feet, but the blanket that’s been draped over the back of it is soft and fuzzy, a loose weave that glides along her skin and feels almost decadent.  Steve’s breathing is quiet and steady next to hers, filling up that space inside of her that’s been emptier than she would have liked to admit to anyone, even herself.  

_ It’s a new world, _ she thinks,  _ and you’ve never been shy.  Or a coward. _

She puts the tea down on the table and leans in Steve’s direction, placing a hand on his shoulder.  He turns to her, and Peggy can see his eyes, wide and nearly luminous even in the shadowy dimness of the apartment.  “What is it?” he asks.

“If I’m misreading this, I apologize,” Peggy says, then slides her hand around his neck and pulls his face towards hers, pressing their mouths together for the first time in ages.  His lips are infinitely familiar, Peggy thinks, feeling exactly like she remembers, though he’s not moving at all, and hopefully she hasn’t scandalized him too badly.

But then it’s like Steve’s entire body surges up against hers, arms going around her back and pulling her flush against him.  His mouth opens up under hers and she moans quietly, her other hand tangling itself in his short hair.  Peggy’s not sure when she pulls back, but she has to, if only to catch her breath for a brief moment.  They don’t split up that much though, not really.  Steve’s hands are still on her, and their foreheads are pressed together, close enough to share breathing space.  She doesn’t want to get much further away than that anyway, she realizes with a start.

“No, uh, no apologies necessary,” Steve whispers.

“Good,” she says, nodding, and brings her mouth to his once more. 

**********

As it turns out, the industrial strength couch is not the best for sleeping, however Steve does make a lovely pillow, Peggy knows.  Her head is pillowed on his bare chest and that silky blanket from the back of the couch has been pulled around them sometime in the night, creating a little bubble of warmth that she’s loathe to leave.  

Steve’s always run hot, ever since the serum.  This is something that hasn’t changed.  He’s still fast asleep beneath her, breathing slow and deep and even, relaxed in a way that she’s never seen him before.  It’s a bit of a marvel, and she can’t help but wonder when was the last time he’d actually had a good night’s sleep.  

Well, they have no plans, no alarm bells going off in the distance, so he can sleep as long as he needs. 

Peggy rolls her head on his chest so she can see out the window again, watching the snow as it falls, decorating the trees and grasses and buildings with crystalline white that, at least for a little while, makes the world seem that much more magical beneath the chaos.   _ This place is making you fanciful,  _ she thinks.  It’s not a bad place to be, however, and Peggy is determined to make the most of it.  

Beneath her ear Steve’s heart beats on, solid and steady and safe. 

**********

Christmas Future

 

Even though the world’s gone topsy-turvy (because Steve and Howard’s son are bloody idiots who jump and act instead of sitting down and talking about things like the adults they supposedly are, Peggy reminds herself with a mental grimace) Steve still manages to maintain some semblance of romanticism for their next Christmas together.  

He plucks a sprig of holly from a hedge as they walk down some quiet street in a quiet town on a quiet night, all glossy deep green leaves and fat ruby berries that nestle comfortably in his gloved hand.  Peggy just shakes her head with an indulgent grin as he twirls the sprig between his fingers, and reaches out to take his hand in hers.  Steve tucks the holly in the brim of her knit cap, a little bright spot of festivity amongst her otherwise sedate clothing.  “Merry Christmas,” he says, grinning impudently under a streetlight.

Peggy shakes her head, biting back an immature giggle, though she knows the smile on her face is practically shining.  “Happy Christmas, darling,” she says, taking his arm and walking further into the night. 


End file.
